


Act Too

by stereomer



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-14
Updated: 2012-06-14
Packaged: 2017-11-07 17:15:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/433515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stereomer/pseuds/stereomer





	Act Too

Gerard says, “I think I remember talking about our birthdays once. It was like, five in the morning your time and you couldn’t really cover up how pissed you were about me waking you up, but then we started talking about birthdays. Something like that.” He’s standing in front of the dresser and rummaging through a duffel bag, talking with his back to Brian. 

Brian knows the night Gerard’s referring to. He knows that he went to sleep clothed but woke up shirtless when his phone started buzzing its way across his nightstand. He knows that a police car had been passing by at that exact moment and the sirens had drowned out Gerard’s babbling for the first five seconds. He knows that it was 5:19am when he flipped the phone open, and that it was 7:24am when his thumb pressed ‘end’ with his ear uncomfortably hot from the phone battery. 

“Yeah. It was like babysitting a drugged out five year old,” Brian says thoughtlessly. He’s lying on the bed with his sock-clad feet crossed at the ankles, still clutching his drink for some reason. The minibar was going to cost a fortune just for being touched, but he doesn’t really care. He hadn’t even technically taken advantage of its namesake – it’s only water in the cup and nothing else. 

He looks up when Gerard sits on the other edge of the bed, twisting his body just so and concentrating on some point past Brian’s shoulder. Brian sees him push his jaw out, an action that opens his mouth in an awkward exposure of teeth, some weird combination of a grimace and a smile. 

“That’s not – that wasn’t the point,” Brian backtracks. He taps the bottom of his glass against his sternum. “Anyway, but yeah, you’re right. We figured out that you were only 136 days older than I was.” He’d actually made Gerard count it out, because back then, counting was an easy way to pass the time until the sun came up and the drugs wore off. Counting, and reciting familiar facts like home addresses and birthdays – Brian’s thankful that Gerard doesn’t remember most of it, but still. Sometimes that stupidly irrational, vindictive side of him flares up and he wishes Gerard did remember.

“136, huh?” Gerard says eventually. “That’s 136 more days I’ve had to fuck up, I guess.” He crooks up the corner of his mouth, then looks down as he smooths out the creases in the bed-sheets with one hand.

There are several options available here. Brian could be Manager Brian and correct him: “That’s 136 more days you’ve had to learn from fucking up.” He could be Coolly Unopinionated Brian and shrug, “I don’t know. If you say so.” Or he could be Blind Denial Brian – more or less an extinct Brian, but still always a possibility – and just insist that, “No, you didn’t fuck up.”

“Yeah, maybe,” is all he ends up saying, and then he allows himself to smile almost challengingly when the urge to do so tugs at his mouth. He doesn’t know which Brian would have responded like that. 

Gerard glances up without raising his head – just a flick of his eyes from under his lashes as he stops moving and lays his hand flat on the bed. The sheets get wrinkled again when he puts his weight on it, the heel of his wrist dipping down into the mattress as he leans in and replies, “Thanks, asshole,” in a wry voice. His mouth twitches.

Brian feels a twinge in his neck. He rolls his head side to side, hearing the ensuing cracking noises, and thinks, oh, okay. That Brian. 

He allows himself to project a little. “I’m glad to see you and Frank getting along onstage these days,” he says, wiggling his eyebrows for effect. He finally puts his drink on the nightstand and stretches out over the bed, effectively covering both pillows with his arms before bringing them back into his chest again. 

Gerard grins. “It is what it is.”

“It is what it is, like it’s a natural progression? Like, you’re going to be humping his leg soon? Going at it against the monitors?”

“Don’t be jealous,” Gerard says with a ghost of a smirk. 

Brian laughs, and it sounds forced in the quiet of the hotel room, but he really does find it funny. “God. I remember when you couldn’t even joke about that word.”

“What, jealous?”

“Yeah. You’d be all – ” Brian scrunches his face up and raises his voice in imitation “ – ‘nah, nobody ever gets jealous over me’.”

“Nobody does,” Gerard confirms. He flops onto the bed next to Brian. “I’ve just learned to keep that thought to myself now.”

“Older and wiser, but still with the shitty sense of self,” Brian says. 

“136 days older,” Gerard adds, turning his head and smiling at Brian. It all feels like small talk, like they’re just dancing their way around the inevitable, or circling around it and poking at it with sticks. 

Brian ventures further, stopping one step short of blatantly asking for it. “Where are the rest of the guys anyway?”

“Oh, out and about. Using their wings of freedom while they have them.” Gerard smiles again, but it’s different this time, less in the stretch of his mouth and more in the way his eyes seem to darken the tiniest bit. He reaches out and hooks his fingers over Brian’s belt buckle. 

“Hey. Come on.” Brian finds Gerard’s index finger and tugs gently until the rest of his grip peels off. It's routine, this half-hearted resistance, and at least now he can say he tried. And surprisingly, this is the easiest part – it always has been, for some reason. Coming together and then pulling apart, even through all the shit that plagued them over the years. The hard things are all the three-hour business calls, the sitting in on meetings, the trying to keep a band happy and together. 

“Come on, what? Where are we going?” Gerard's smile shifts crookedly. He grabs the buckle again.

“No one ever said you weren’t persistent,” Brian says just for the sake of saying something. He doesn’t retaliate this time, only listening to the silence pervading the room, the hallways outside, and the entire hotel for all he can hear.

“I know you were counting on that,” Gerard replies, giving him one of those rare looks that makes Brian unable to think about anything else; that could change the meaning of everything they’ve done and probably will do. He doesn’t know if it’s genuine, or if it’ll hold up tomorrow, or even ten minutes from now. He doesn’t really know anything. Five years spent having sex in countless places and continents whenever the urge hit, and they were still stumbling around in the dark, or “rolling with the punches,” as Gerard called it, and Brian really couldn’t think of another way to put it, either.

“Happy Birthday,” Gerard adds.

Brian smiles - 'ruefully' isn't quite the right word, but it feels something like it. When Gerard tugs on his belt again, this time he allows himself to be pulled along.


End file.
